How much does it cost to self publish a book?
You’ve written a book, you want to get it on Amazon and KDP, and maybe a few other online outlets. So, how much does it cost to self publish a book? Well, that all depends…
First you need to lay out the book and come up with some cover art. You can achieve this with desktop publishing software like Adobe Indesign, or more likely for the average user, Word Processing software like Microsoft Word. If you can save the document into a PDF you will have the file you need for the interior to upload.
Your cover art will likely be a PDF and need to be high resolution. For instance 300 dpi. If you’re making the artwork yourself try to save into the PDF format which will preserve the quality of the text (something called vector art) as opposed to saving as a JPG file which will make the type part of the picture (called raster art). Vector art will produce clear text on the cover. All the text on the inside PDF will be vector. When you upload your artwork if the resolution isn’t right generally you’ll get an alert. The on demand publishers we recommend have specifications which make clear what the resolution of the images need to be.
So if you can pull this off by yourself, so far your budget is zero. That being said, hiring a Graphic Design Professional is certainly worth thinking about. They also may be able to help you with the ebook version, which is a little harder to do on your own as it requires the ebook format (.mobi is the final format on Amazon but you can upload an ebook) and an interactive table of contents. How much this will cost depends on the designer, but a top notch graphic designer who can design a professional cover and interior for you could be $2000. A discount designer could be a few hundred. Remember though you generally get what you pay for. Read more
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